It is known to provide electronic interfaces to a trading environment, in order to allow trading of financial instruments such as stocks or the like. Web-based stock brokerage systems are particularly prevalent, such as those available before the priority date at the following URLs www.morganstanley.com and www.merrilllynch.com. Such systems allow a user to perform online trading of stocks and shares, commonly for either a percentage or fixed fee which was less than was traditionally the case. In addition to electronic brokerages, electronic stock ticker services are also known which provide news messages in the form of share prices, volumes of share trades, or the like. An example of such a stock ticker service is that provided by the well known information company Reuters, and in particular the Reuters Market Monitor Service described at http://about.reuters.com/productinfo/rmm/?seg=9.
However, such electronic, and particularly web based, news and brokerage services provide rich content in that they make particular use of graphics, which require a relatively high bandwidth connection and high resolution screen display facilities. As such, they are useful for users provided with desktop or laptop computers provided with fully functional browsers, but cannot be used by users with less functional devices, and in particular by mobile users provided with commonly available mobile devices, such as GSM telephones. However, there is clearly a need to allow users mobile access to stock trading services, in order to permit trades to be made and monitoring to be maintained of a portfolio and other news when a user is away from his fully functional laptop or desktop computer.